


brew and boil

by WingedQuill



Series: geralt sad hours 2020 [2]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Established Relationship, Flashbacks, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, Hurt Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Purring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:49:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25043422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedQuill/pseuds/WingedQuill
Summary: Jaskier wakes up in the middle of the night to find Geralt frantically counting his healing potions by the dim light of the fire. This leads to revelations about Geralt's past that he wasn't fully expecting, but is more than willing to accept if it means helping his lover heal.(Written for Geralt Whump Week, Day Two: Potions)
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: geralt sad hours 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1811878
Comments: 24
Kudos: 560





	brew and boil

**Author's Note:**

> CW: Past torture, non-explicit discussion of said torture, flashback/panic attack/dissociation. Sorry Geralt :(

Jaskier isn’t sure what's woken him, at first.

One minute he’s having a lovely dream, waltzing with Geralt by the side of a firefly-bright lake, trading kisses whenever they step in close, and the next he’s unwillingly awake in a dark, mosquito-filled forest. He yawns blearily, and reaches out towards Geralt’s side of the bedroll, hoping to press his face between Geralt’s shoulder blades, wrap his arms around his waist, and fall back asleep.

His hands hit empty, rumpled cloth, without even a trace of lingering body heat.

That wakes him up fast.

He jolts upright, shoving his hands beneath him and kicking off the blanket. His heart is hammering under his ribs, pattering frantically as he scans their camp. Did Geralt hear a monster and slip off to dispatch it? Did bandits snatch him away as he was sleeping? Or has he finally tired of Jaskier and decided to run off rather than break up with him directly?

He hopes it isn’t the last option. Jaskier’s heart has cracked so many times over the years, battered by countesses and knights and maids alike, but he thinks losing Geralt would be the thing to shatter it completely.

Fortunately, his panic doesn’t last for too long, as he spots Geralt crouched by the low, cracking flames of their campfire. Relief blooms in his chest. He’s just stoking the campfire then, nothing unusual. Jaskier should really work on his tendency to instantly assume the worst.

“G’ralt?” he yawns. “Come back to bed, love.”

Geralt doesn’t move.

“Geralt?”

Jaskier remembers that his tendency to assume the worst is a survival skill, born out of decades of bad monster hunts, broken hearts, and getting the shit kicked out of him, and looks at Geralt again. Closer.

His head is down, hair falling into his face as he stares at the ground by his feet. He’s muttering under his breath, low enough that Jaskier can barely hear him. His hands flick over the earth, tapping down at regular intervals. Is he counting something?

The relief flickers out, replaced by a pooling dread that curls through his body, sending sweat prickling across his back.

“Geralt?” he says again, getting to his feet. Geralt doesn’t stop his mumbling. Jaskier approaches him, cautiously, keeping his footsteps heavy enough to hear. He doesn’t want to startle Geralt. He remembers how his sister got as a child, when she had waking dreams like this. Surprising her was an easy way to receive a blow to the jaw, and he doesn’t want to add to Geralt’s ever-growing guilt complex. He also quite likes his nose in its current shape, thank you very much.

Geralt still doesn’t say anything, but his eyes do flick up, watching Jaskier warily. His pupils have gone almost needle-like, the barest slits, despite the darkness of the woods around him. And this close to him, Jaskier can hear another noise beneath Geralt’s mumbled words. A low, rumbling purr, the noise that Geralt makes when he’s comfortable and happy, yes, but also when he’s scared or stressed or injured.

“Hey,” Jaskier whispers, sitting down next to him. He’s careful to keep an arm’s length between him and Geralt, just in case Geralt thinks he’s someone else. Geralt stares at him, hunched protectively over the ground—no, over a collection of vials that he’s spread out over the ground. Jaskier blinks.

“Are those your potions?” he asks. Geralt growls in the back of his throat, then flinches, like he’s expecting Jaskier to retaliate.

Jaskier looks at the vials a bit more closely and yes, those are definitely Geralt’s potions, most of them shoved off to the side, except for a small pile of bright red vials directly in front of Geralt. Healing potions, Jaskier realizes. Geralt is counting his healing potions.

He’s seen him do this before. Geralt has an obsession with making sure he doesn’t run out of Swallow, getting nervous and cagey as soon as his stash falls below twenty, carrying a tension between his shoulders until he can make more. But the counting and re-counting has always occurred at normal times—after hunts, before restocking herbs. Certainly not in the middle of the night accompanied by growling and stressed-out purring.

Jaskier has always chalked up Geralt’s potion thing to practicality. Survival. Run out of healing potions and you can’t fix yourself if a monster guts you. Perhaps he got himself in a dicey situation without any Swallow before, perhaps he can’t bear to let it happen again. It can get a bit…compulsive, sometimes, the counting, but Geralt has lived a hard and exhausting life. Jaskier knows that lends itself to certain tics.

(Jaskier has counted and recounted his own food supply enough times, long after money stopped being an issue.)

But now he’s thinking that he should have brought it up before, when Geralt wasn’t _somewhere else._ Because he sure as hell isn’t seeing Jaskier right now, isn’t seeing his lover, their campsite, their cozy bedroll.

“I don’t need more water,” Geralt says, his voice as low and raspy as ever. There’s a note of fear in it, desperation. He’s _trembling._ “I don’t. You can go.”

He gathers up the Swallow with shaking hands and gets to his feet, stumbling away from Jaskier. _Fuck._ He doesn’t want Geralt running away into the woods when he’s like this, gods know how long it will take him to wake up.

“No water? Okay. You don’t need to drink any water.” Jaskier says, holding up his hands as he gets to his own feet. Geralt’s pupils get impossibly narrower as he backs away, his purr growing louder, rasping and rolling in his throat like sandpaper sliding together. Jaskier winces. That can’t feel good.

“I don’t need it,” Geralt insists, and he’s staggering towards the tree line. Jaskier curses quietly and follows him forward.

“I know you don’t—” he tries to say.

“It’s too soon, it’s too soon,” Geralt says. “ _Please,_ you can’t—you want me alive, right?” His breathing is coming faster and faster, short puffs of air that make the purrs sound like they’re being beaten from his chest.

“Of _course_ I want you alive,” Jaskier says, even though he knows Geralt isn’t talking to him. “I want you _safe,_ Geralt, and happy. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Geralt laughs, wild and crackly as a lightning bolt.

“Yeah, you want me to hurt myself, right? Then you can’t give me more water right now, I’ll die, I’ll die and then you won’t get to watch me hurt, _please, don’t—”_

Tears are gathering in Jaskier’s eyes, because this doesn’t sound like he’s pleading with an angry villager or a particularly intelligent monster. It sounds like he’s being tortured. Like he’s trying to rationalize his torturer into not killing him.

 _Gods._ Jaskier can feel his dinner rising in his throat, and he swallows reflexively. Vomiting would only spook Geralt more, he’s sure.

“Geralt, _please,_ you’re not—you’re with me. With Jaskier. _Please,_ just stop, I don’t want you hurting yourself.”

He takes one more step forward, and sees the moment that fear takes over Geralt completely.

“Don’t—” he starts but Geralt is already turning, running into the woods without his armor or weapons. Jaskier has only a moment to feel horrible, blistering fear at that, before Geralt is stumbling over his own shaking legs.

He tries to right himself, but his foot catches a tree root and sends him sprawling forward. There’s a sharp shattering sound as he hits the ground and he yelps in pain. And then he goes very still, trembling on the ground like a newborn animal.

Jaskier swears again and darts to his side, reaching out slowly to rest his hand on Geralt’s shoulder. He jerks under his touch, rolling to the side to get away and scrambling into a seated position.

When Jaskier sees the bright red stain on the front of his shirt, his first reaction is panic. _Blood. How did he lose that much blood, did a branch go_ through _him, how did that—?_ And then he remembers the armful of Swallow. Oh. Right.

Geralt’s gaze flickers over the ground, taking in the shattered glass, the damp earth, the red staining his shirt. His eyes are blank. Glassy. Devoid of his fear from earlier, devoid of any emotion at all.

It’s even more terrifying than the terror.

There’s glass sticking through the shirt, buried in the skin beneath, but Geralt doesn’t seem to notice.

“Geralt?” Jaskier calls. He puts his hand on Geralt’s shoulder again. He doesn’t so much as twitch, doesn’t so much as look at Jaskier. “Do you wanna come back to the camp?”

Geralt doesn’t move. He stays on the ground and looks at the shattered glass. His hand drifts forward and comes to rest on the damp earth. There’s something broken in his eyes, an exhausted resignation. Like a man ready to climb the gallows.

Jaskier has never seen that expression on Geralt’s face before. He’s always been so determined to live. It’s one of the things Jaskier loves most about him.

“Okay then. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

He squeezes Geralt’s shoulder and gets to his feet, sprinting back to the camp. He snatches the blanket up from the bedroll, a pair of tweezers from his med kit. He nearly grabs a canteen, but decides against it. _I don’t need more water,_ Geralt said.

His…his _torture,_ and gods, that word hurts to think about in reference to Geralt, had probably involved water. Jaskier’s mind instantly fills with a hundred gruesome images, a hundred ways you could hurt someone with water, and he blinks them away, shaking his head. Speculation won’t help Geralt right now.

He brings the supplies back and finds Geralt right where he left him, still staring at the glass. He considers moving it, but that might just trigger another bout of panic.

So instead, he carefully drapes the blanket around Geralt’s shoulders, and settles down at his side.

“I’m going to get the glass out now,” he says, and he hates how much his voice is trembling. “It’s going to hurt, but we need to do it quick to avoid infection, okay?”

Geralt doesn’t answer.

“Okay,” Jaskier stays, steadying his nerves. “Okay.”

He half-expects Geralt to start screaming at the first hint of pain, trapped in the memory as he is. But he doesn’t. His muscles tighten under Jaskier’s fingers, and his face twitches, but other than that, he doesn’t react at all.

Jaskier blinks back tears. He won’t think about the fact that his love is used to pain. He won’t. He _won’t._ He’ll get the glass out and stay with Geralt until he’s lucid, and _then_ he can have a good long cry.

He pulls the last piece out with a wince and a murmured “good job,” sets the tweezers aside, and tucks the blanket closer around Geralt. Geralt blinks at him, slow and lethargic. There’s confusion there, too, and Jaskier hopes that maybe he’s starting to notice the discrepancy between reality and his nightmare. He presses himself against Geralt’s side, running one hand lightly up and down his back. Gentle touches. He’s sure Geralt didn’t get any of those wherever he is right now.

Slowly, inch by inch, Geralt relaxes under Jaskier’s touch. The purring starts up again, and Jaskier isn’t sure if it’s due to stress or comfort this time. He hopes it’s the latter.

By the time Geralt speaks, the first rays of dawn are starting to peek through the trees.

“Jaskier?” he whispers. His voice is even thinner than normal, even raspier. Not for the first time Jaskier catches himself wondering if there’s something wrong with Geralt’s…

_I don’t need water. It’s too soon. You want me alive, right?_

…throat.

He swallows. Forces his imagination down.

“I’m here, love,” he says, bringing his hand up to card through Geralt’s hair. “I’m here. _You’re_ here, with me.”

“I know,” Geralt says. He leans into Jaskier. A sob bubbles up from his chest, and Jaskier turns so that he can wrap both of his arms around Geralt and pull him into a hug. He goes easily, falling into Jaskier’s embrace and burying his head in his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he cries. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“I know you didn’t,” Jaskier says. He squeezes tighter. “These things just happen sometimes, Geralt. It isn’t your fault.”

“I should have told you,” Geralt gasps. His shoulders hitch beneath Jaskier’s hands and Jaskier _aches._ He’s almost never seen Geralt this upset before—only once, when he told him about the sacking of Kaer Morhen.

“You don’t owe me your past,” Jaskier says, tangling his fingers back in Geralt’s hair. “I’ll gladly listen to it, I’ll honor whatever you choose to share with me, but you don’t owe me your trauma, or your pain, or _any_ of that. I will never get mad at you for keeping it to yourself. Okay?”

Geralt falls apart again, shuddering sobs wracking his body as he nods against Jaskier’s shoulder. Jaskier holds him as the pain rushes through him, holds him and lets a few of his own tears fall.

When the storm has passed, the sun hangs high in the sky, lighting the forest up in bright swathes of green. Geralt pulls back with a sniffle, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. His eyes are red and his face is wet, but his pupils have gone back to their almost-human shape, and he no longer seems ready to run at the slightest provocation. Jaskier breathes a sigh of relief.

“Need to make new potions,” he mutters, plucking at the glass aimlessly. “Don’t like running out.” He hesitates, worrying at his lip. Jaskier stays calm, and silent, though he wants nothing more than to pull Geralt into another hug and kiss that pained look off his face.

“…they made me ration them,” he says at last. “To keep me alive. I was…I was terrified of what would happen when I ran out.”

Rage curls in Jaskier’s stomach, hot and blinding, and he wants to demand names, demand locations, hurt and maim and _slaughter_ everyone who had a hand in hurting his lover. But instead, he takes a deep breath, and reaches out to lace his fingers together with Geralt’s.

“Thank you for telling me that,” he says. “I can help you gather the ingredients you need. We’ll make sure you don’t run out, okay? Ever. I can even carry some of them for you if you want. Split them up across different bags.”

Relief sparkles in Geralt’s eyes, and he brings Jaskier’s hand up to his lips.

“Thank you,” he murmurs against Jaskier’s skin. “For not…judging me.”

“You shouldn’t need to thank me for that. But you’re welcome anyway. Is there anything else that you need?”

Geralt frowns. Rubs his thumb over Jaskier’s knuckles.

“I’m thirsty,” he says at last. “And I know…I know we’re out of clean water and we need to boil more but can I—can I stay here while you do it?”

Jaskier’s awful imagination spins to work again. Boiling water being forced down his lover’s throat over and over, wrecking his voice, swelling up his airway, forcing him to drink his valuable Swallow so he wouldn’t suffocate on the blisters.

He pushes it down. Pushes it away. There will be time to grieve for what happened to Geralt later. Time to plan revenge. For now he has a job.

“Of course, love,” he says, pressing a kiss to Geralt’s scarred lips. “Of course. It won’t be a moment.”

He climbs to his feet, breathes in the new knowledge about Geralt, tucks it safely away, and gets to work.


End file.
